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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
It should be good news for Biden. Generally presidents benefit from good economic “vibes.” But who knows? He’s old so they may just hate him no matter the reality.
It appears Americans are finally feeling better about the economy.
Consumer sentiment, a window into the nation’s financial mood, jumped 13 percent in January to its highest level since mid-2021, reflecting optimism that inflation is easing and incomes are rising, according to a closely watched survey by the University of Michigan. Since November, consumer sentiment has risen 29 percent, marking the largest two-month increase in more than 30 years.
Gas prices, often a key driver of sentiment, have fallen 40 percent since June 2022, to just over $3 a gallon. Weekly jobless claims are at their lowest level in more than a year. Sales of cars, clothing and sporting goods all picked up during the holidays, as consumers felt confident enough to keep spending.
Meanwhile, the stock market is surging to new records, with the S&P 500 closing at an all-time high on Friday.
Many are hopeful, too, that interest rates have peaked and the Federal Reserve may begin to cut them this year, which would make it cheaper to borrow for a range of items, including cars and homes.
“We’re seeing a continuation of the surge in sentiment we saw at the end of last year,” said Joanne W. Hsu, an economist at the University of Michigan and director of its consumer surveys. “If anyone was wondering, ‘Was December a fluke?,’ it is absolutely clear now that it wasn’t. This is a sign that consumers are feeling better. Their confidence has come back.”
That jump is fueling hope that the U.S. economy — and Americans’ perception of it — may be turning a corner after months of inflation-related unease. Rising sentiment among both Democrats and Republicans comes at a critical moment for the Biden administration, which has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are making their lives better ahead of November’s presidential election.
“At a cerebral level, voters may still say Biden mismanaged the economy,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. policy and politics at Wolfe Research and an economic policy staffer to Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration. “But the dissipation of their really intense personal dissatisfaction with the economy still really helps at the level of the political context.”
They may feel that Joe Biden mismanaged the economy because the Republicans waged a ,multi-decade propaganda campaign, stemming from Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate term, to convince people that Republicans are good on the economy and Democrats are bad. The opposite is true.
Biden is even doing better than St. Ronnie Reagan in his first 3 years recovering from massive economic disruption:
Biden’s inflation rate, by the way is now
Philip Bump did a necessary deep-dive into James Comer’s mendacity about those transcripts. It’s truly astonishing that they are able to get away with this:
One of the arguments offered by attorneys for President Biden’s son Hunter when responding to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee for a closed-door deposition was that the committee had shown a pattern of cherry-picking what would be presented to the public.
This is unquestionably true. Over and over and over and over and over, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has made debunked and unsubstantiated public statements that cast the president and/or his son as dishonest or has rushed to release unsubstantiated claims or information that similarly collapse under scrutiny. The first year of his investigation into the Bidens made extremely little progress as a result — except where it matters, in the right-wing media universe.
Clearly, though, this has not gone unnoticed by those enmeshed in Comer’s sprawling investigation. There was that letter from Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell in November. And then, this week, a letter from an attorney for Kevin Morris, a wealthy friend of Hunter Biden who helped pay off the president’s son’s tax liability.
Morris appeared for a closed-door deposition on Thursday. His attorney, Bryan Sullivan, claims in the letter that he asked at the outset that his client’s testimony not be cherry-picked or misrepresented. Instead, he said, he received only a promise that Morris would “be treated fairly.”
“You did not treat Mr. Morris fairly and engaged in your standard practice of partially and inaccurately leaking a witness’s statements,” Morris writes in the letter obtained by The Washington Post. “Not two hours after we left Mr. Morris’ transcribed interview, you issued a press statement with cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading descriptions of what Mr. Morris said.”
It is very important to point out that this may simply be Sullivan’s effort to frame the moment as positively as possible for his client. We should not assume that the examples in his letter — which we’ll consider in a moment — are themselves necessarily accurate.
To his point, though, this could be ameliorated by the House Oversight panel releasing a transcript of the testimony. This is not an instantaneous process, certainly; it took three days for the testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer to be released last year. But there’s also no rush to try to frame Morris’s testimony, no demand to make public what he said. Well, there is one source of demand: the right’s appetite for any morsel of information that seems to implicate the president or his son in wrongdoing. That’s a demand for which Comer offers an endless supply.
There’s something else to consider about Sullivan’s response. Even if it is an attempt to cast his client in a more favorable light by pointing to Comer’s track record of cherry-picking, it reinforces that this cherry-picking is a liability for Comer. That he has this track record of trying to construct as damning a case as possible instead of trying to fairly represent witness testimony as broadly informative about the investigation itself.
Sullivan alleged multiple misrepresentations — again, the transcript can help tell us who is more accurately describing what occurred. Comer’s press release:
-inaccurately described why Morris made the loan to Hunter Biden,
-used scare-quotes around “loan” to suggest that the payment (vetted by attorneys, Sullivan argued) was not a loan at all,
-overstated Morris’s past support for Democratic candidates, andsuggested that this money had somehow provided Morris access to the president.
“Mr. Morris testified that he has only had cursory communications with President Biden at public events like Mr. Biden’s daughter’s wedding,” Sullivan wrote, “and said basic courtesy things as ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’ and President Biden making comments about Mr. Morris’ unkempt hair style that lasted a few minutes.”
The scare-quotes around “loan,” we should note, are probably meant to suggest that Morris didn’t expect to be repaid (though, per Sullivan, Morris testified under oath that he did). It’s also a word that has gained new importance for Comer in the past few months.
[…]
We may perhaps see if this is another example of Comer cherry-picking or framing claims that help his case or if, instead, it’s an example of how his doing so frequently in the past allows critics to disparage how he’s conducting the probe.
Neither is what one might seek in an objective investigator.
You can read the whole thing at the gift link above. It’s important to understand what they are doing but most of the media doesn’t bother to spell it out. It all becomes “where there’s smoke there’s fire” to many in the public. It destroys people and it needs to be batted back when we get the opportunity.
Removed from reality
Somewhere over the last day or so someone remarked that the Masters of the Universe meeting in Davos, Switzerland seem utterly unremarkable. That is, judging by the lack of fresh ideas floating around the ultra-rich conclave. On what to do about fanatical populism spreading across the globe, they’ve got worries but otherwise nothin’, according to Nahal Toosi, Politico’s senior foreign affairs correspondent:
In conversation after conversation here, I detected resignation and helplessness among business executives when it came to their counterparts in government. There’s a desperate desire to see the world’s political leaders appeal more to moderates instead of capitalizing on extremes, but there’s also recognition that the political market doesn’t easily reward the people in the middle.
C-suite types fear the polarization will only deepen as half of the global population, in more than 60 countries, votes in 2024 — everywhere from South Africa to the United States. For them, financial consequences can be stark, especially if the results of an election threaten shipping lanes or when campaign rhetoric leads to violence in a place they’ve invested.
“The biggest concern is instability,” the CEO of a private equity fund told me.
That would be financial instability, naturally. We’ve seen social instability before.
Oh, great googa-looga, can’t you hear me talking to you
Just a ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today
Woo, hey
But even as they long for moderate forces to rise above the extremes, there appears to be little sense of how the business community can help make that happen. I kept asking for specific solutions that companies could offer to reduce societal polarization, but I received no concrete responses.
Election, elections everywhere this year, but the biggest concern is the prospect of Americans returning Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 to finish the job he started in 2017. And to finish off NATO.
Corporate leaders are reading closely about the Republican frontrunner’s views on tariffs and other economic practices, which are far more isolationist than even the relatively cautious Joe Biden. Whichever way the United States is heading will affect the policies of other governments, leading business executives to ask some very basic questions.
“It’s something as simple as this: Many businesses we have operate across borders. Is a country for or against free trade?” the private equity fund CEO said.
Consumers’ fate seemed less a concern than producers’ bottom lines, although the two are intimately interwoven.
The coats are oversized, and so are the egos.
And so, in some cases, is the sense of self-pity. In this rarefied environment, I was told that it doesn’t help to be a billionaire, millionaire or merely very rich when it comes to the political environment these days.
After all, actors on both the far left and far right of the political spectrum have anger toward the rich gathered here in Davos, often blaming them for the world’s ills.
“The right says everyone is under threat. The left says the capitalist system is exploitative,” the consumer goods company CEO said.
Biden administration spokesmen Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan stuck to safe talking points. Businessmen worry that if the Biden administration is gone in 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act will go with it, and their long-term contracts and ROI. One private equity CEO tells Toosi, “very few people have priced in the risk of Trump coming back” into their models.
At the World Economic Forum, they worry about lining their pockets while in Gaza people cannot fill their stomachs, or their children’s. And the executives wonder why “the far right and the ultra left see them as an enemy.” So far removed, allies they are not:
The US claims it is working “relentlessly” to get humanitarian aid into Gaza amid UN warnings that the territory’s 2.2 million people are “highly food insecure and at risk of famine”.
Antony Blinken, speaking at Davos this week, called the situation in Gaza “gut-wrenching”. But the US secretary of state was unable to secure any major new gains on increasing the amount of assistance entering the territory during his recent visit to Israel, even as leaders of international organizations advocate for urgent access.
“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the WFP, said in a statement.
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Sayin’, ball of confusion
That’s what the world is today, hey, hey
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Ball of confusion
Get real, people
An online acquaintance once belonged to the Democracy Alliance, a gaggle of liberal millionaire/billionaires formed in 2005 as a lefty counterpart to the Koch donor network. Yes, they’ve done some things to advance the cause, as Michael Tomasky notes below. But conservative moneybags are long-term political investors willing to sink hundreds of millions in media outlets to bend the country’s will over time to theirs. Rich liberals tend to eschew deferring gratification in favor of near-term electoral wins. They want trophies they they can show off to friends the way congressman pose for photos in front of new destroyers. IIRC, my friend left Democracy Alliance in frustration over that, and later the country.
Michael Tomasky opines on David Smith’s purchase of The Baltimore Sun at The New Republic:
But this column isn’t about the Sun and Smith. In fact, I applaud Smith and Sinclair in one, and only one, respect. They get it. They understand how important media ownership is. They are hardly alone among right-wing megawealthy types. Of course there’s Rupert Murdoch, but there are more. There’s the late Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who, after he got rich from his Unification Church, sprouted media properties, most notably The Washington Times, still owned by the church’s News World Communications (once upon a quaint old time, it was shocking that the conservative newspaper in the nation’s capital was started by a cult). And Philip Anschutz, whose Clarity Media Group started the tabloid newspaper The Washington Examiner in 2005. These days, the list includes Elon Musk with X/Twitter, Peter Thiel and Senator J.D. Vance with Rumble (a right-wing YouTube alternative), Ye with his attempted purchase of the now-defunct Parler, and, of course, Donald Trump, with Truth Social. They all understand what Viktor Orbán told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022: “Have your own media.” Shows like Tucker Carlson’s old Fox show, the Hungarian strongman said, “should be broadcast day and night.”
I’ve been watching this develop for decades. The right-wing media was a thing long ago, but it was still easily drowned out by the mainstream media. If the mainstream media was a beach ball, the right-wing media was a table tennis ball.
Today? The mainstream media, with cuts like those endured by the Sun, is maybe a volleyball, and the right-wing media is a basketball—a little bigger. And it’s on its way to beach-ball-hood. The right-wing media is now the agenda-setting media in this country, and it’s only getting bigger and more influential every year.
And how have the country’s politically engaged liberal billionaires responded to this? By doing roughly nothing.
The right plays a long game. Read “Democracy in Chains.”
Nonprofit media such as ProPublica do impressive work, but as nonprofits IRS rules require they be nonpartisan at a time when money-losing media outlets owned by right-wing ideologues labor under no such limits. The right’s media machine is loud and proud. We once called it The Mighty Wurlitzer.
The Democracy Alliance was started to grow a countervailing progressive infrastructure, Tomasky explains:
It helped seed the Center for American Progress, designed as liberalism’s answer to the Heritage Foundation. It helped grow groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. On the media front, it funded Media Matters for America, the broad left’s leading media watchdog outfit.
But there is one job liberal benefactors have refused to take on (with a few exceptions, starting with the owner of this very magazine). The cost has been enormous. And by the way—this story isn’t over. By a long shot. I’m certain David Smith wants to buy more struggling newspapers and turn them into MAGA sheets. And there are surely mini-Sinclairs in formation. Prager University’s right-wing misinformation videos are gaining a foothold in some public schools. Right-wing outlets have zero interest in sharing the “media space” with the mainstream media. They want to crush it.
[…]
What will the result be 20 years from now? Will we be raising a generation of children in two-thirds of the country who believe that fossil fuels are great and trees cause pollution, that slavery wasn’t the cause of the Civil War, that tax cuts always raise revenue, and that the “Democrat” Party stole the 2020 election? Yes, we will. And it will happen because too many people on the liberal side refused to grasp what Murdoch, Anschutz, Smith, and Viktor Orbán see so clearly. Have your own media.
Digby founded Hullabaloo. Josh Marshall has Talking Point Memo. Markos and Co. still have Daily Kos. None of us own daily newspapers or TV channels or have the means for buying any. Air America (March 2004) began as a broadcast alternative to right-wing talk that dominates radio across red states. Funding was always tenuous. Competing for broadcast space against conservative networks with more powerful stations, it lasted barely six years before folding. * Conservative ideologues don’t expect their partisan ventures to make money. And they offset their losses by purchasing networks of stations that do.
The left cannot give up the Enlightenment notion that the truth will set us free, that truths are self-evident, as the Declaration says. Give people the facts and, as rational beings, they’ll reach the same conclusions as ours. Uh-huh. Or the notion that people [grinds teeth] should vote their best interests as the left defines them. Or that our self-evident ideas sell themselves. They don’t. There’s an entire industry named for a street in Manhattan that spends billions to market consumer products. Democrats resist spending to sell their ideas.
*Some friends and I once produced and ran progressive 30-second radio commercials in our rural-ish market for diddly-squat just to demonstrate that that could be done for small money. Just because we couldn’t compete with the Limbaughs minute for minute and hour for hour was no reason to forfeit the airwaves to them.
Onstage at a New Hampshire campaign event on Wednesday night, former president Donald Trump bragged about many things: his immigration policies, his passage of a tax cut, the unemployment rates during his administration.
He also bragged that he correctly identified a whale on a cognitive test when he was president.
“I think it was 30, 35 questions,” the former president said of the test, which he said involved a few animal-identification questions. “They always show you the first one, like a giraffe, a tiger, or this, or that, and then: a whale. ‘Which one is the whale?’ Okay. And that goes on for three or four [questions], and then it gets harder, and harder, and harder.”
Trump, 77, said he aced the exam, which he said he took to silence the critics who claim he may be too old or cognitively incapable to run for president.
Chief among those critics is former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who — to gain ground on Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary — has sharpened her pitch against him by doubling down on questioning his age and cognitive abilities.
Since the beginning of her campaign, the 51-year-old Haley has proposed that politicians and lawmakers over the age of 75 be required to take a “mental competency test” before they’re allowed another term in office. And while she has mainly targeted President Biden’s age — 81 — on the trail, in recent days she has also been drawing in Trump when arguing that the country needs younger leaders.
After finishing third in the Iowa caucuses behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Haley has repeatedly pointed to Trump’s age as an attack line in television ads and media interviews ahead of the crucial New Hampshire primary next week.
“The majority of Americans think that having two 80-year-olds running for president is not what they want,” she said at a campaign stop Tuesday in Bretton Woods, N.H. On Wednesday and Thursday, she more than once accused Trump of throwing a “temper tantrum.”
The attacks appear to be bothering the former president, who on Wednesday night spent a good portion of his remarks talking about how young he feels and boasting about his cognitive abilities.
“I feel like I’m about 35 years old,” he said. “I actually feel better now than I did 30 years ago. Tell me, is that crazy? I feel better now, and I think cognitively I’m better than I was 20 years ago. I don’t know why.”
“I think I’m cognitively better but I don’t know why” is not the brag he thinks it is.
London Zoo’s gorilla keepers were carrying out their usual morning duties when they first spotted that Mjukuu was in labour. Giving the experienced mum some space, they monitored her via CCTV cameras installed in the dens.
Moments after giving birth in the privacy of their back dens, second-time mum Mjukuu could be seen gently cradling her newborn, before allowing the troop’s curious youngsters Alika and Gernot to examine the intriguing new arrival.
London Zoo’s Primates Section Manager Kathryn Sanders said: “We started our day as normal – we gave the gorillas their breakfast and began our cleaning routines. When we returned to their back dens, we could see Mjukuu was starting to stretch and squat – a sign that she was in labour.
“After a very quick labour – just 17 minutes – Mjukuu was spotted on camera tenderly holding her newborn and demonstrating her wonderful mothering instincts – cleaning her infant and checking it over.”
The birth of a western lowland gorilla at London Zoo is a real cause for celebration – the subspecies is critically endangered and as a result of poaching and disease their wild numbers have declined by more than 60% over the last 25 years.
The infant was fathered by Kiburi, who arrived at London Zoo from Tenerife in November 2022 as part of the international conservation breeding programme for western lowland gorillas – the programme ensures the preservation of a genetically diverse and healthy population of the gorilla subspecies.
Kathryn added: “To say we’re happy about this new arrival would be a huge understatement – we’ve all been walking around grinning from ear to ear.
“We’ll be giving mum and baby lots of time and space to get to know each other, and for the rest of the troop to get used to their new addition – they’re as excited as we are and can’t stop staring at the baby.”
Zookeepers are yet to confirm the sex of the infant, who has remained closely snuggled in its adoring mum’s arms. The infant will remain in close contact with mum for around the first six months of its life.
To find out more about the conservation zoo and book to visit London’s gorilla troop, visit www.londonzoo.org
Will Barrett and Roberts save Chevron?
Ian Millhiser has a tiny bit of hope:
Four justices appeared absolutely determined, on Wednesday, to overrule one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in the Court’s entire history.
Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council (1984) is arguably as important to the development of federal administrative law — an often technical area of the law, but one that touches on literally every single aspect of American life — as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was important to the development of the law of racial equality. Chevron is a foundational decision, which places strict limits on unelected federal judges’ ability to make policy decisions for the entire nation.
As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during Wednesday’s arguments, Chevron forces judges to grapple with a very basic question: “When does the court decide that this is not my call?”
And yet, four members of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh — spent much of Wednesday’s arguments in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce speaking of Chevron with the same contempt most judges reserve for cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the pro-segregation decision rejected by Brown.
The open question is whether the Court’s four most strident opponents of this foundational ruling can find a fifth vote.
None of the Court’s three Democratic appointees were open to the massive transfer of power to federal judges contemplated by the plaintiffs in these two cases. That leaves Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett as the two votes that remain uncertain. To prevail — and to keep Chevron alive — the Justice Department needed its arguments to persuade both Roberts and Barrett to stay their hands.
Barrett, of the two, appeared the most open to preserving Chevron. Among other things, she repeatedly expressed concerns about the disruptive consequences that would result from overruling one of the most widely cited Supreme Court decisions of the last century. As Justice Elena Kagan noted at one point, Chevron has been cited by 17,000 lower court decisions, and Barrett appeared troubled by the “flood of litigation” that would result if all of these decisions were called into question.
Roberts, meanwhile, spent much of Wednesday’s arguments downplaying the significance of Chevron. That said, the Chief did have a colloquy with Paul Clement, one of the lawyers arguing in favor of overruling Chevron, which suggests he may be looking for a way to hand Clement’s client a narrow victory without deciding if Chevron itself should fall.
So the bottom line is that, if you are a gambler, you should bet on Chevron being overruled. But there is an off chance that Roberts and Barrett will decide not to make one of the biggest power shifts to an unelected branch of government in American history.
There’s not much to hang your hopes on there but I suppose it’s better than nothing. This is the most important GOP establishment project out there and it’s also a priority of MAGA guru, Steve Bannon (“deconstruction of the administrative state”) It’s a huge case. Keep your eyes on it.
Millhiser has much more at the link. It’s probably a good idea to take a few minutes to read the whole thing. We’d better hope that two of the terrible majority haven’t completely gone to the dark side.
The Supremes blocked his most comprehensive student loan relief policy but it hasn’t stopped them from doing what they can. He should get some credit for it:
The Biden administration on Friday announced another $5 billion in debt forgiveness for 74,000 student loan borrowers.
Although the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness plan, his administration has found alternative ways to provide relief to more than 3.7 million people.
The batch of debt cancelation announced Friday stemmed, in part, from his administration’s changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
The majority of borrowers who will benefit from the latest round of forgiveness are teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public service professionals, per a White House release.
The remaining borrowers who will benefit have repaid their loans for at least 20 years but never got the relief they were entitled to under their income-driven repayment plans.
Biden said in a statement his administration would continue to find other ways to forgive loans held by “as many borrowers as possible.”
“I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams,” he said.
It’s not enough but within the ridiculous boundaries of our system of government, they have not given up. I know for a fact, you get anything better from a Republican.
I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but it turns out that corporations have been massively profiteering over the pandemic.
A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.
The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.
Prices for consumers rose by 3.4% over the past year, but input costs for producers increased by just 1%, according to the authors’ calculations which were based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Income and Products Accounts.
“Costs have come down substantially, and while corporations were quick to pass on their increased costs to consumers, they are surprisingly less quick to pass on their savings to consumers,” Liz Pancotti, a Groundwork strategic advisor and paper co-author, told the Guardian.
Since pandemic inflation spiked in 2021, a high-stakes debate has played out about its sources. Many progressive economists pointed to corporate profits – or “greedflation” – and supply chain issues as a driver of high prices, while their more conservative counterparts singled out government stimulus cash and high wages.
The report’s authors scoured corporate earnings calls and found executives bragging to shareholders about keeping prices high and widening profit margins as input costs come down.
The findings come as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates to their highest point in 20 years. The report casts serious doubt on the need for further interest rate hikes, and instead calls for stronger policies to rein in “corporate profiteering”.
Oy vey. If it isn’t the fascism it’s the corporate greed. And the two so often go together perfectly.